The "Childmyths" blog is a spin-off of Jean Mercer's book "Thinking Critically About Child Development: Examining Myths & Misunderstandings"(Sage, 2015; third edition). The blog focuses on parsing mistaken beliefs that can influence people's decisions about childrearing-- for example, beliefs about day care, about punishment, about child psychotherapies, and about adoption.
See also http://thestudyofnonsense.blogspot.com

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Concerned About Unconventional Mental Health Interventions?

Friday, July 22, 2016

Nancy Thomas' Inaccurate Statements About Children and Mental Health

Usually I avoid looking at Nancy Thomas’ website, www.attachment.org, but I was reminded of
it the other day and had a look—several looks. And of course, having looked, I
want to point out a few of the flaws therein.

Let’s start by looking at Thomas’ comments about
Attachment Therapy (www.attachment.org/what-is-attachment-therapy/),
which, she says, consists of eye contact, touch, smiles, and the “sharing of
sugar between the mother and child”. Yes, folks, it appears that Thomas is
still committed to the idea she put forward in the 2000 book edited by Terry
Levy (and published, to its shame, by Academic Press). She suggested there that
attachment can be created by hand-feeding caramels to a child. Logical? You
bet, if you can accept Thomas’ premises. These are 1) that attachment normally occurs
soon after birth, 2) that breastfeeding contributes to attachment, 3) that
because human milk is slightly sweeter than cow’s milk, milk sugars play a role
in attachment, 4) that caramels, which contain milk and sugar, are analogous to
human milk, 5) that when a woman hand-feeds caramels to a child, the effect on
the child is like that of being breastfed. Of course, attachment does not begin
shortly after birth, nor is it especially related to breastfeeding. Although it’s
true that human milk is sweeter than cow’s milk, there is no reason to think
that its sweetness has more to do with an emotional effect on the child than
its protein or calcium contents or the individual flavors that come from what
the mother has eaten (and anyway, as I just said, there is no particular
connection between breastfeeding and attachment). In fact, this whole argument
is simply based on sympathetic magic mixed with the assumption that a mother’s
early positive feelings toward her infant are immediately mirrored by similar
feelings on the part of the infant.

Attachment Therapy, as discussed by Thomas, requires,
in addition to sugar, a “release of rage” over a period of several hours. Thomas’
hero Foster Cline supposed that children in this kind of treatment are angry
because of the loss of the birthmother and that their rage blocks the development
of a new attachment. He used a hydraulic analogy to suggest that when the
children express rage, they then become able to form an attachment. This belief
unfortunately contradicts research evidence that expression of anger actually
intensifies the anger rather than diminishing it. In addition, the belief that
a newborn separated from the birthmother will be angry is in contradiction to
everything known about early cognitive and emotional development. On this
topic, of course, we need to ask how the “release of rage” would be brought
about, and the most likely guess is that it is to be done by physical
restraint, shouting, and terrifying the child, as per the rage-reduction
therapy of the ‘90s. Although Thomas does not define Attachment Therapy directly
in this way, she provides enough cues to convey what she is actually talking
about, and allows us to guess what she does in her camps when she takes a child
aside for a “tune-up”.

The same page reveals two other incorrect
assumptions-- unstated, as presumably
the wished-for reader already agrees with them. One is that unwanted behavior
of children is of necessity associated with difficulties of attachment-- difficulties that, we are told, can be fixed
with caramels and other equally likely methods. The second is that the
diagnosis Reactive Attachment Disorder means
that a child is manipulative, aggressive, untruthful, exploitative, and so on.
Neither of these positions is correct. Certainly children who show risky
behavior may have had few opportunities for attachment, but the same kinds of
behavior can appear in children with a good attachment history and clear
attachment behavior in earlier life. Also, certainly there are children who are
manipulative, etc. etc., and they may have at one time also shown symptoms of Reactive
Attachment Disorder (although there is no clear method for diagnosing that
disorder in school-age children), but the various undesirable behaviors named
are not symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder.

Thomas also repeats a claim that was common among
members of Cline’s group in Evergreen in years gone by. She proposes that “traditional
therapies” are not only ineffective but actually harmful in cases of
undesirable child behavior. On another page, www.attachment.org/therapy-goals/
, Thomas states that “Non-directive play therapy, traditional talk therapy, and
sand tray therapy have been proven to either be ineffective with children with
RAD or make them sicker.” This is, of course, completely untrue with respect to
any usual use of the term “proven”. In order for such proof to exist, someone
needs to have systematically compared the outcomes of Attachment Therapy with
those of the methods Thomas references, and I can assure you that this has not
been done. Indeed, there has never been a systematic study of the outcomes of
Attachment Therapy alone. Thomas’ argument is not based on the existence of
systematic research, but instead on her belief that if a possible mechanism for
an effect can be named, this is as good as having found evidence that the
effect occurs. She states on both pages the unsupported belief that being alone
with a therapist enables a child to become more manipulative, etc., and thus “sicker”,
and that the presence of the mother is essential to prevent this. These assumptions
are put forward as evidence that the claimed outcomes occur.

It’s a bit mind-boggling to try to unravel the
logical and factual mess presented on www.attachment.org.
Unfortunately for their children, those who can’t bear a bit of mind-boggling
may fall for the claims of this purveyor of snake oil. And just as regrettably
for all of us, reporters who hastily copy Thomas’ claims can and do spread
these misconceptions and give free advertising to Attachment Therapists.

2 comments:

I haven't appreciated how much stock Nancy Thomas puts in getting children to "tell their secrets," and her belief that if a child is still behaving badly it means that the child still has secrets which are keeping him from healing.

About Me https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Mercer

Jean Mercer has a Ph.D in Psychology from Brandeis University, earned when that institution was 20 years old (you do the math). She is Professor Emerita of Psychology at Richard Stockton College, where for many years she taught developmental psychology, research methods, perception, and history of psychology. Since about 2000 her focus has been on potentially dangerous child psychotherapies, and she has published several related books and a number of articles in professional journals.
Her CV can be seen at http://childmyths.blogspot.com/2009/12/curriculum-vitae-jean.mercer-richard.html.